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Costa Rica Day 2- Paso Canoas to Puerto Jimenez

In the morning we continued our trip to our destination of Golfito in the Osa peninsula.

We went to a nearby ATM to take out some local Costa Rican currency, Colones. The going rate was 500 Colones to 1 US dollar.

The bus station was right outside our hotel. We were to catch a bus to Golfito which was the costal town then catch a ferry across the lake to Puerto Jimenez.

The bus left Paso Canoas at 10:30 in the morning and ran us 2400 Colones each.

The bus ride was an uneventful hour and a half or so. When we first got on the bus, we gave the driver 10000 Colones and he didn’t give us change. When we would go up to the front to ask him, he kept shooing us away. We became increasingly annoyed when it started to seem more and more like he was trying to screw us. We got a local to help us out and showed him and finally he gave in and coughed up our change.

I knew Golfito was on the coast so we had our eyes open for the boat launch when we saw water.

We double checked with the driver that this is where we would catch our ferry to Puerto Jimenez and he confirmed.

We thought we would be catching a small water taxi like those on the right but we were directed to walk out on a dock just to the left where there were others waiting in the shade.

It was beautiful here.

We were confused about the boat schedule until we realized we had changed time zones by an hour.

We were on the 2pm ferry and had some Duros a lady was selling (sweet frozen fruit drink)

The ferry ride was about 45 minutes and we arrived in Pto Jimenez, equally beautiful.

Our mission here was to go to the ranger station, as our guide book said if we wanted to stay in Corcovado National Park we had to make reservations here ahead of time.

It was an inconspicuous building so at first we walked passed it.

But sure enough this was the place.

The woman working here talked little English and was very unhelpful. We wanted to go to Corcovado park but she wasn’t offering much information.

The day we wanted to stay in the park was full so we reserved the following day that was open. She gave us a paper and sent us to the bank a 5 minute walk away in the center of town to pay for the reservation. It closed at 3 so we didn’t have much time to get there.

The bank was interesting in that it had super high security; finger print scan to open door, that was similar to an airport scanner. After being scanned there was an armed guard who asked us to remove our hats. Intense.

Anyway, we paid up ($10 per day park fee, then $10 to stay over night) and headed back to the ranger station.

There were 3 options for us to get to Sirena ranger station from where we were in PTO Jimenez.

We could either fly there ($80), hike 20kms, or take busses. We didn’t have time to hike both ways and we didn’t want to have to hike with our gear so we ruled that out. Flying was expensive; we decided to take the bus. More on this later.

Now we had a plan, we had to find a place to sleep.

We asked around and found a hostel called Cabinas el Perezoso.

The guy had rooms for $8 per night which we couldn’t beat so we took it.

The hostel was very basic but the guy was super nice and accommodating and there were nice people there. At dinner time he took down coconuts for us.

It had been a long ass day and we had to get up early so called it a night.